


little lady

by clxude



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Future Fic, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 13:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8753008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clxude/pseuds/clxude
Summary: Yuri Plisetsky has never been one to foster crushes.Unfortunately, King JJ never got the memo.





	

**Author's Note:**

> takes place 10 years in the future (kinda) - yuri is 25 and jj is 29  
> self betaed so if there are any problems let me know! ~~i wrote most of this at 3 am rip~~

One of the best moments in Yuri’s life, hands down, is when JJ announces his retirement. He’s skating when Mila tells him, and he keeps skating - straight into a wall. He hits the plexiglass hard, and Mila spends a solid three minutes laughing her ass off before making sure he isn’t dying. Fortunately, he’s not. 

 

Jean-Jacques Leroy is twenty eight when he announces that he’ll be retiring the following year.

 

Yuri Plisetsky is twenty five when he wins the Grand Prix Finals for the first time.

 

There isn’t a correlation, Yuri tells himself that night, when he’s sitting alone in his hotel room and fiddling with his gold medal. Text messages have been lighting up his phone for hours, countless congratulations from his family and other figure skaters. He replies to Victor but it ignores the Japanese Yuuri completely, not even bothering to open the message. He doesn’t have time for people who retire without gold medals. 

 

But there’s one message that he can’t bring himself to open, even as the desire to do so eats away at his stomach like battery acid. It’s from fucking  _ King  _ JJ of all people, not that he’s called that in Yuri’s contacts. Yuri could never give him that satisfaction. 

 

So he just reads the message  _ (So the lady can win),  _ before deleting it and tossing his phone onto a pile of dirty clothing in the corner of the room. He climbs under the starched sheets and wiggles his toes. 

 

He won gold at the Grand Prix Finals, so why doesn’t he feel any different?

 

…

 

Yuri Plisetsky has never been one to foster crushes. Sure, there was a time when he liked Victor, but who hasn’t? But that was a one off - Yuri is good at keeping emotions, other than anger, off of the ice. 

 

It’s easier, simpler. Yuri was only fifteen when he had his senior debut; there wasn’t any time to be fooling around with his coach like the Japanese Yuuri. Maybe he would of, if his coach was someone other than Yakov, if it was someone like Victor - but Yuuri never won, did he?

 

But Yuri has never been good at following the rules he sets for himself, and JJ is a prime example of that. Yuri isn’t sure where he first saw the Canadian skater perform, whether it was on TV back home in Russia, or at one of the various competitions he’s attended over the years. Where it was doesn’t matter, but Yuri can always see that attitude when he closes his eyes, the in-your-face arrogance. 

 

Yuri hates him. He’s terrible, the  _ king,  _ and yet - 

 

And yet, Yuri has never once been able to forget about him. 

 

…

 

It started out simple, just watching JJ’s performances whenever he was able to catch them on TV at the rink. It’s important to know your competition, after all. Scores mean nothing, after all, if they can’t go toe to toe with the other skaters. 

 

It escalated to buying JJ’s singles. Yuri still occasionally -  _ occasionally -  _ listens to the  _ Theme of King JJ  _ while running, but it’s a shit song, just like the rest of JJ’s music. Yuri’s glad that it was a short lived venture on JJ’s part, and that he’s long since stopped barraging the world with his lackluster vocals. 

 

Things weren’t going badly, on the JJ front. They were almost  _ good,  _ with Yuri coming just a few points shy of beating him. The gap would drop every year. 

 

And then the feelings started, a warm heat low in Yuri’s belly whenever he saw JJ skate. He ignored it, for the most part, kept his eyes on the ice and skates in the air. Perfected a few quads, won a few gold medals at national competitions. 

 

The heat never subsided, but it never grew, either, until Yuri was twenty four. His hair was longer, brushing midback and almost always braided to keep it out of his eyes and mouth. He comes in second at the Grand Prix, mere tenths of a point behind JJ. 

 

“Still can’t beat me, eh?” JJ smirks as Yuri leaves the Kiss and Cry. Yuri kinda wants to punch him but he also wants his silver medal, so he glares and stomps off like the child JJ is convinced he still is.

 

“Fuck him,” he mumbles that night in the back corner of a fucking McDonald’s, definitely not thinking about how perfectly JJ’s costume hugged his muscles as he shoved fries into his mouth. 

 

He tells himself it means nothing until he wins gold the next year, the first time he isn’t competing against JJ since he was fifteen. But now that he’s twenty five and a little bit wiser, the emotions around JJ harder to ignore. 

 

…

 

The months go by and Yuri practices and practices. He ignores bleeding feet and bruises joints - winning gold means nothing if he can’t win more times than Victor. Victor has told him otherwise, but Victor also calls every Sunday morning after breakfast to check up on Yuri like a fucking mother hen and doesn’t seem to have any concept of time zones, so Yuri has a hard time trusting his word.

 

“You have a visitor,” Mila tells him once he comes in for practice Friday morning. Yuri doesn’t trust her for shit, and her sly expression isn’t helping matters any, either. 

 

“Go retire,” he says, ignoring the sweaty towel that she throws his way, before heading to the locker room.

 

He drops his bag as soon as he turns the corner. The clinking of blades hitting concrete floors echoes through the hall.

 

“Hey, little lady,” JJ tilts up his jaw. “Need help with your bags?” His undercut is buzzed closer to the skin than normal, and the top layers fall in his eyes a little more. He looks happy, he -

 

Yuri skates his head.  _ Don’t fall for another skater,  _ he tells himself,  _ not even a retired one. And especially not one as conceited as Jean-Jacques Leroy.  _

 

“The fuck do you want?”

 

“Just wanted to make sure you weren’t slacking since you got gold. It was pretty easy for you to win this year, with a forty point lead, wasn’t it?” He pushes off of the wall to stand beside Yuri. He has a few inches on Yuri, and his presence is so immense - it’s hard to not feel overwhelmed. 

 

“Maybe I’m just better than you,” Yuri shoots back.

 

JJ hums, looking self-satisfied. “That would certainly explain all of those times you beat me.”

 

Yuri scowls. He picks up his bag and moves to shoulder pass JJ, but he places two fingers on Yuri’s elbow before he can. 

 

“We should catch up. Dinner tonight?”

 

Yuri scoffs. “Only if you’re paying.”

 

“But, of course. I am a gentleman, after all.”

 

Yuri flings himself onto the ice after that, his skates tied too tightly to be comfortable but he doesn’t care. He just skates and skates, going over his free program and jump approaches until he can’t remember how  _ fucking stupid  _ he was quite as clearly. 

 

…

 

He considers running out of the rink and moving to the countryside, maybe Siberia. He knows it’s cold, but nothing can be quite as awful as the embarrassment sliding into his bones. 

 

Mila stops him, unfortunately. 

 

“I heard about your hot date.” The ease with which she still manages to pick him up annoys him to no end. “I never saw you and JJ, but I can’t say that I’m not proud.”

 

“Put me down,” he begs.

 

“And risk you running away?” she laughs, her shoulders shaking. “Not a chance, Yuri.”

 

“That’s so sweet of you, Mila.”

 

She turns around to face JJ, leaving Yuri unable to see, unless he wants to struggle and twist against Mila’s grip. He elbows her right at the bottom of the spine instead. She grunts and sets him down. He doesn’t look at JJ until he’s straightened his hoodie.

 

“So sweet if you to dress nicely,” JJ jokes, eyeing his sweaty practice clothes.

 

“Fuck you.”

 

…

 

A few blocks down from the rink, there’s a pirozhki truck park. Yuri doesn’t mind, even if he knows that there’s no way they’ll be as good as his grandfather’s. It’s snowing, but not hard enough to stick. 

 

JJ, however, looks completely miserable. He’s shivering constantly, his hands shaking even as he clutches his steaming hot pirozhki. 

 

“You’re cold?” Yuri balks. “Isn’t Canada cold as well?”

 

“I’m from Toronto.”

 

Yuri blinks.

 

“The city?” JJ tries to explain more. “It’s not as cold there. Besides, I wasn’t expecting snow.”

 

“Idiot,” Yuri mumbles as he wipes his hands clean of grease on his pants’ legs. “Come on,” he calls over his shoulder as he begins to walk down the street.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

“Home, dumbass,” Yuri sighs. There’s a part of him that wants this, or some form of it, at least. The other part of him wants to run home and leave JJ here and pretend that this never happened. “I don’t want your parents to come for me when you unsurprisingly die of hypothermia.” 

 

…

 

Yuri’s apartment is cramped and barely big enough for a child, let alone two adults. But it’s warm - something that JJ is obviously thankful for, as he immediately flops onto the couch as soon as the door is shut. 

 

“Good night,” Yuri mumbles as he heads into his bedroom. He’s glad for the lack of lamps currently on in his apartment, with the way his blush is heating up his cheeks.

 

“What do you mean, goodnight?”

 

“I mean, goodnight.” Yuri closes his bedroom door before any more words can be said. He leans against his door for a long time after that in an attempt to calm down. But, it’s impossible, when his thoughts keep cycling back to the man in his living room.

 

…

 

He wakes up early the next morning, but his apartment is already empty, the only evidence of JJ a freshly washed coffee mug. There’s a note on the kitchen counter, beside the coffee machine -  _ “This was fun. Let’s do it again. Maybe you’ll even talk to me next time.”  _

 

Yuri kicks a cabinet door. He’s an idiot, idiot,  _ idiot -  _

 

But he also wants to spend time with JJ, and the...  _ feeling  _ doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon. 

 

…

 

Somehow, completely uninvited, JJ inserts himself into Yuri’s life. He’ll tag Yuri in the comments of pictures of cats on Instagram, sends him snapchats of breakfast in Canada, nonsensical texts about his day and random thoughts that cross his mind in the dead hours of the night. Yuri never responds, but JJ never stops, either. 

 

But when JJ tells him which days he’ll be in Russia next, Yuri finds it hard to say no to pirozhki dates in the last of the spring snowfall. 

 

…

 

“God, you’re an idiot.”

 

“At least I never fell while trying to skate backward.”

 

“I knew I shouldn’t have told you that.”

 

“But you did.”

 

“Shut the fuck up and eat your food.”

 

…

 

Yuri doesn’t know what they are, but he knows they’re not exclusive.  __

 

He’s used to the pictures of JJ next to models - rich, pretty girls dressed in expensive, pretty clothing. They show up on Instagram all of the time, and occasionally when he’s surfing the internet. Yuri may be the only boy, the only figure skater, but that doesn’t mean shit. 

 

They’re not a  _ thing,  _ and they never will be _. _

 

…

 

Competition season is back in swing, and Yuri has less time to check his phone. Truthfully, he just flat out forgets to open half of the notifications he gets. JJ seems to be sending more than ever and at infrequent times, like he’s dead set on cementing himself in Yuri Plisetsky’s life.

 

But there’s still those photos, JJ’s hands low on the waist, pale against a black slip of a dress. The girls never look the same but JJ always does, the same smirk, the same pose, like he’s become a goddamn stock image.

 

He deletes Instagram from his phone the night before Skate America and lets his fans post pictures of his gold medal on the internet instead.

 

…

 

_ When’s your next competition,  _ JJ texts a week later.  _ I want to watch. _

 

Yuri doesn’t answer; it’s easier not to. 

 

_ I asked Victor. ISU gave me tickets for Rostelecom since Skate Canada already sold out. I’ve missed seeing you skate live. It’s not the same on TV. Film has never been able to capture your passion. _

 

Yuri turns off read receipts, after that.

 

…

 

“Hey, little lady.” 

 

Yuri is quick to slap away the hand on his hip. He turns around to glare at JJ. He’s wearing a shirt for his old band, because he’s awful like that, and his Canadian skate team jacket. No one if hanging off of his arm, but Yuri doubts that he’s here alone. 

 

“Fuck off.”

 

“After I came all this way to see you?” JJ is in his space - he’s too close - someone could  _ see - _

 

Yuri isn’t the one to step back, but he is the one to stumble away, cheeks pink and mind swimming. 

 

“I need to warm up,” he mumbles, and as soon as he turns around the corner, he runs for all he’s worth. 

 

…

 

Rostelecom goes well. None of Yuri Plisetsky’s jumps so much as shake when he lands, which is better than he was four years ago, when he finally figured out how to be graceful in his post-puberty body. He makes gold to no one’s surprise, and from the top of the podium, it’s easy to see JJ leaning against the barrier, smiling his same bs grin as always. 

 

“Can I come over?” he, asks once Yuri is off of the ice.

 

It takes all Yuri has to not freeze up, to make sure no one else heard those four words. Yuri doesn’t care what other people think, he really doesn’t. But he’s not Victor, and he can’t image a world where he’s not living in Russia, stuck in another country for something as worthless as love. 

 

“You can leave.” 

 

Yuri leaves again, runs away, just like always. 

 

…

 

Victor and Katsuki Yuuri come to Sapporo to cheer him on. They have a banner and everything, like a couple of proud parents. Victor manages to sweet talk his way into the kiss and cry and gives Yuri a hug on international television after the short program.

 

“Yurio has grown so much,” he whispers into Yuri’s neck. Yuri hugs back for just a second. He hates Victor sometimes, but it’s nice to have him here, when he knows JJ is somewhere, with the countless photos he’s been posting on his snapchat story. 

 

…

 

His free program is nothing less than perfect, going over his previous best score by five points. He’s going into finals in the top spot, with a nice cushion between him and number two. He’s going to win again, there’s little doubt about it.

 

_ Where’s your hotel? _

 

He ignores JJ’s text as he climbs into a taxi. It’s not far, but it’s beginning to snow and Yuri doesn’t like walking in snow when he’s sweaty and gross.

 

_ I need to talk to you,  _ comes JJ’s next message. And a few minutes later -  _ I would text you, but that’s kind of hard when you never respond.  _

 

Yuri’s an idiot, that’s the only explanation for typing out the hotel’s name and his room number. 

 

JJ doesn’t bother to text back, but he does send a selfie over snapchat, and - 

 

Yuri already regrets this.

 

…

 

He changes into sweatpants once he makes it to his room, chucking his scratchy track pants somewhere far, far away. He digs out a hoodie from the depths of his suitcase, and once it’s on, there’s nothing for him to do but sit at the foot of his bed. His feet don’t quite touch the ground; his socked toes brush the carpet whenever he points them. 

 

He jumps when JJ knocks on the door. He takes a deep breath before standing, and another before unlocking the latch and opening the door. 

 

JJ’s gotten a haircut since the last time Yuri saw him. He wants to run his fingers through the dark hair, to tug on the longer strands. 

 

“What do you want?” he asks instead.

 

“Can I come in?” 

 

Yuri rolls his eyes and steps to the side. By the time he closes the door and turns around, JJ is already sitting on his bed, shoes kicked off. 

 

“You’re the worst,” he mumbles, but still sits down beside him.

 

“I know.” A few moments pass before JJ asks, “what do you want us to be?”

 

Yuri doesn’t answer right away; that would be impossible. He doesn’t even know how he feels about JJ, let alone the two of them, together. 

 

“What do you want?”

 

“I asked you first,” JJ jokes, but he shuts up once he sees Yuri’s glare. “I want us to be together.”

 

Yuri scoffs. “You’re the one always partying with girls.”

 

“I can like both - “

 

“I’m not saying you can’t, idiot.”

 

“Well, maybe if you acted like you gave a fuck about me for longer than two seconds, it wouldn’t be like that,” JJ snaps.

 

In an instant, it’s like a switch has been thrown. It’s too quiet, too still. The room is too small and air suddenly feels incredibly stuffy.

 

“I’m not Victor,” Yuri says. It’s as close to an apology as JJ will ever get. “I’m not like him. I can’t just - Russia is home. I won’t throw that away for anyone.”

 

“Even if it means you can’t be yourself?”

 

JJ’s hand brushes against his for a split second, before pulling away. Yuri misses his touch immediately. 

 

“I like how my life is now. I don’t want to lose it for something that might not last.”

 

JJ hums. His hand is next to Yuri’s, close enough that Yuri can feel how warm it is. 

 

“But what if it does?” JJ stands up and slides his shoes back on. “You can think about this for longer. Text me whenever you're ready.”

 

“I want you,” Yuri says, once JJ is almost to the door. “And I have for far longer than I’ve been willing to admit it.”

 

JJ doesn’t turn around, but he isn’t leaving, either. 

 

“I don’t want you to leave,” he continues, chin tucked into his chest. Yuri Plisetsky doesn’t get  _ scared,  _ Yuri Plisetsky is unstoppable. But in this moment, this singular second in time, he’s terrified. “I don’t want to come out right away, but if it was with you, and if we were happy, I wouldn’t mind.”

 

“Can I kiss you?” JJ asks, even as he’s still facing the door.

 

“Yes.”

 

It’s soft and delicate, with Yuri’s hands laying by his sides, JJ’s holding his jaw. Careful, innocent, barely the brush of skin and lips. Warm and slow, little more than a dream.

 

“Okay,” JJ whispers into Yuri’s mouth. “Okay.”

 

…

 

At Skate Canada the next year, Jean-Jacques Leroy kisses Yuri Plisetsky after his free skate. Through the camera flashes, the loud voices of the announcers and the screams of fans, Yuri kisses back. It’s barely a kiss, but it’s enough -

 

Enough to drag Yuri a little deeper, a little more in love with King JJ.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> tumblr - mother-iwa-chan  
> comments/kudos/requests are always appreciated!!  
> now to go back to writing essays *dies* and victuuri *dies again for a different reason*


End file.
